Second-year students majoring in international journalism at the Institute for International Relations, which was opened by the Foreign Ministry in 2008, took part in the two-week course. The OSCE Centre in Ashgabat organized the course in co-operation with the Ministry.

"The media training course is a follow-up to a lecture delivered earlier this year by Miklos Haraszti, the OSCE Representative on Freedom of the Media. This programme contributed to the training of future journalists and press attaches who will be entrusted with the challenging mission of informing their fellow citizens and the international community about different aspects of life, both in their countries and abroad," said Ambassador Arsim Zekolli, Head of the OSCE Centre in Ashgabat.

The training course addressed such matters as the role of a journalist, contemporary media and ethical journalism, journalism and the law, press freedom and globalization of the media.

"We focused on the kind of skills a journalist or a press officer needs to work in today’s digital, internationalized media world," said Sean Crowley, the British media trainer teaching the course.

The sessions comprised theoretical lectures and practical exercises aimed at building the students’ skills in news and feature writing, interviewing for print and electronic media, as well as writing press releases and organizing press conferences.